


Escape

by glim



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, POV Female Character, Women of the Morse Universe Fanwork Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7303192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can't forget, not when she's decided that the only way to survive in this world is to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape

Joan leaves. 

She puts on her coat and scarf -- not her favorites, and not the ones that will always remind her of home, but a coat and a scarf that remind her of who she is and where she's going. 

It's not that she doesn't want to remember; all she wants to do is remember, to hold the warmth of her parents' house inside her heart forever and to always be able to recall the sound of early weekday mornings and Sunday afternoons at home with her family. 

She won't forget. She can't forget, not when she's decided that the only way to survive in this world is to leave. 

*

Once upon a time, they had a house in London. Joan doesn't remember much, she doesn't remember how that house felt or smelled or really even how it looked. They've photographs at home, and she'll flip through them with Mum sometimes to look at baby pictures and listen to her mum talk about what it was like when they lived in the old house. 

"But why did we leave?" Joan asked, only once, when her mother looked sad as she shuffled through the pictures. 

Mum shook her head, said something about Dad's work. "Sometimes," she added, not looking at Joan or at the pictures, "it's better to leave." 

* 

So this house, the one she leaves on a chilly morning after she stops to talk to Morse, is the one she commits to memory. 

Morse won't understand, she suspects, and when she tells him that her father won't understand either, she knows she's right. He can't -- they can't. They won't understand the loneliness, the feeling that you are playing a part in somebody else's life, and that the choices you want so desperately to make have been taken away from you. 

Or, no, maybe that's not fair. They've both made their fair share of choices, they've both left places, willing or not. 

*   
Her mum will understand. 

Her mum will be devastated, will wake up morning after morning and look for her, Joan knows, and nothing hurts more than this: her mother looking, hoping for how many weeks and months and years. 

But Mum will understand, though she herself has chosen to stay, and though that understanding may also take weeks and months and years, some part of her will understand that Joan couldn't simply wait. 

*

Joan leaves, and the leaving is a slow process. 

She leaves the small pieces of her girlhood behind. 

She leaves school. 

She leaves for work every morning, leaves for lunch, leaves to come home again at night. 

She leaves herself behind, sometimes, she thinks.

*

The night before her brother leaves for the army, she stands in his bedroom door and watches him pack. His belongings are a haphazard mess that Mum or Dad will tell him to fix if he wants to take any of it. 

"Are you excited?" Joan asks, and Sam shrugs. "I would be. I'd be so excited to finally be able to leave all this behind and learn how to live in the world."


End file.
